Teacher psychopathology, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion satisfaction during COVID-19: Resilience and risk factors.

Teaching staff have been especially vulnerable to experiencing psychopathology and compassion fatigue during COVID-19, given the significant demands they have experienced. Yet, research on risk and resilience factors is scant. We assessed the psychological status of Israeli teaching staff during COVID-19, focusing on psychopathology (depression, anxiety, somatization), compassion fatigue (burnout, secondary traumatic stress), and compassion satisfaction. We also examined the role of transdiagnostic risk and resilience factors-mentalizing, self-compassion, self-criticism, social support, and specialized trauma training-in predicting psychological status and mitigating the link between COVID-19-related distress and psychological status. An online questionnaire was completed by 350 teaching staff. Analyses included outlining the distributions of psychological status outcomes and running a series of moderation models using hierarchical robust regression. While 48% of the participants exhibited moderated-to-high levels of anxiety and 28.27% had no somatization, only 13% exhibited moderate-to-severe levels of depression; 60% had moderate levels of burnout, 48% had moderate levels of secondary traumatic stress, and 52% had low levels of compassion satisfaction. COVID-19-related distress, self-criticism, prementalizing modes, low socioeconomic status, and being in an intimate relationship emerged as key risk factors positively associated with psychological status, while self-compassion, general mentalizing, interest and curiosity about mental states, and social support were negatively linked with these outcomes. Teacher's mentalizing about students' mental states and social support moderated the link between COVID-19-related distress and psychological status. The findings highlight the importance of risk and resilience factors for assessing and preventing teaching staff's psychopathology and compassion fatigue during COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A short version of the reflective functioning questionnaire: Validation in a greek sample.

This study aims to validate the Greek version of the 54-item Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ), a measure designed to assess an individual's capacity for understanding themselves and others based on internal mental states. This capacity, also known as Reflective Functioning (RF) or mentalizing, is believed to play a significant role in both typical and atypical development. The validation process examined the factor structure of the RFQ and its relationship with a variety of psychosocial and clinical constructs that have theoretical and empirical links to RF. Additionally, this research investigated the factor structure's invariance across gender and age groups to determine the robustness of the instrument. A unique contribution of this work lies in examining the application of the RFQ to attachment classifications through the use of cluster analysis. The sample consisted of 875 Greek adults from the general community with a mean age of 28.5 and a median age of 22. Participants completed the Greek RFQ along with a series of self-report questionnaires assessing psychosocial constructs, including attachment, epistemic trust, emotion regulation, and psychological mindedness, as well as clinical variables such as anxiety, depression, and borderline personality traits. Our findings suggest that a shorter, 31-item version of the questionnaire provides a robust three-factor structure across a non-clinical Greek adult population. The three identified subscales are (a) excessive certainty, (b) interest/curiosity, and (c) uncertainty/confusion, all demonstrating satisfactory reliability and construct validity. The uncertainty subscale was found to be associated with insecure attachment styles, epistemic mistrust and credulity, emotional suppression, and low psychological mindedness. In contrast, the certainty and curiosity subscales were linked to secure attachment, epistemic trust, emotion reappraisal, and psychological mindedness. Uncertainty was further shown to differ significantly across probable clinical and non-clinical groups, as distinguished by cut-off scores for anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, the certainty and interest/curiosity subscales only varied between the two BPD groups. Our results provide the first evidence supporting the use of a 31-item version of the RFQ with three validated subscales to reliably assess reflective functioning in the Greek population, demonstrating stronger psychometric properties compared to other RFQ versions reported in previous studies. Findings suggest that impaired mentalizing capacity, as measured by the RFQ, is linked to insecure attachment, epistemic mistrust and credulity, poor emotion regulation, and low psychological mindedness, and potentially plays a role in adult mental health symptoms.

The mindful trajectory: Developmental changes in mentalizing throughout adolescence and young adulthood.

BACKGROUND: Mentalizing and psychological mindedness are two key, partially overlapping facets of social cognition. While mentalizing refers to the ability to reflect on one's own mental states and the mental states of others, psychological mindedness describes the ability for self-reflection and the inclination to communicate with others about one's own mental states. PURPOSE: This study examined the development of mentalizing and psychological mindedness throughout adolescence and into young adulthood, and the interplay between the two with gender and the Big Five Personality Traits. METHODS: 432 adolescents and young adults (ages 14-30) were recruited from two independent schools and two universities. Participants completed a set of self-report measures. RESULTS: A curvilinear trend in both mentalizing and psychological mindedness indicated a gradual development of these capacities with age, peaking in young adulthood. Across all age groups, females had consistently higher mentalizing scores than males. For females, scores only changed significantly between age bands 17-18 to 20+ (p<0.001), ES (d = 1.07, 95% CI [.1.52-.62]). However, for males, a significant change in scores appeared between two age bands of 14 to 15-16 (p<0.003), ES (d = .45, 95% CI [.82-.07]), and 17-18 to 20+ (p<0.001), ES (d = .6, 95% CI [.1.08-.1]). The change in psychological mindedness scores differed, and females did not have consistently higher scores than males. Females' scores were only significantly higher for ages 14 (p<0.01), ES (d = .43, 95% CI [.82-.04]), and 15-16 (p<0.01), ES (d = .5, 95% CI [.87-.11]). As with the development of mentalizing abilities, female scores in psychological mindedness remained stable from 14 to 18 years of age, with a significant change between age bands 17-18 and 20+ (p<0.01), ES (d = 1.2, 95% CI [1.7-.67]). Contrastingly, for males significant change occurred between 15-16, 17-18 (p<0.01), ES (d = .65, 95% CI [1.1-.18]) and 20+ (p<0.01), ES (d = .84, 95% CI [1.5-.2]). A significant positive association was found between mentalizing and psychological mindedness and the personality traits of Agreeableness, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness (p<0.0001). Psychological mindedness had a weaker positive correlation with Extraversion and Openness to Experience (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The discussion is focused on the interpretation of the findings in light of social cognition and brain development research.

What helps the helpers? Resilience and risk factors for general and profession-specific mental health problems in psychotherapists during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: Although the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected wellbeing of at-risk groups, most research on resilience employed convenience samples. We investigated psychosocial resilience and risk factors (RFs) for the wellbeing of psychotherapists and other mental health practitioners, an under-researched population that provides essential support for other at-risk groups and was uniquely burdened by the pandemic. Method: We examined 18 psychosocial factors for their association with resilience, of which four were chosen due to their likely relevance specifically for therapists, in a cross-sectional multi-national sample (N = 569) surveyed between June and September 2020. Resilience was operationalized dimensionally and outcome-based as lower stressor reactivity (SR), meaning fewer mental health problems than predicted given a participant's levels of stressor exposure. General SR (SRG) scores expressed reactivity in terms of general internalizing problems, while profession-specific SR (SRS) scores expressed reactivity in terms of burnout and secondary trauma, typical problems of mental health practitioners. Results: Factors previously identified as RFs in other populations, including perceived social support, optimism and self-compassion, were almost all significant in the study population (SRG: 18/18 RFs, absolute ßs = 0.16-0.40; SRS: 15/18 RFs, absolute ßs = 0.19-0.39 all Ps < 0.001). Compassion satisfaction emerged as uniquely relevant for mental health practitioners in regularized regression. Discussion: Our work identifies psychosocial RFs for mental health practitioners' wellbeing during crisis. Most identified factors are general, in that they are associated with resilience to a wider range of mental health problems, and global, in that they have also been observed in other populations and stressor constellations.

Emotion regulation in adolescents: Influences of internal representations of relationships - An ERP study.

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies can decrease the intensity or modify the experience of emotions. Deficits in emotion regulation are implicated in a wide range of psychopathologies. It is argued that interpersonal, socio-cognitive, and developmental variables play an important role in ER. This is the first study to explore the contribution of individual differences in internal representations of relationships (IRR) to neural correlates of ER in a sample of adolescents. Event related potentials of 53 adolescents (12 to 17 years old) were collected while performing an ER task. IRR was assessed with the social cognition and object relations scale (SCORS-G; Westen, 1995) coding of narratives from interviews. Results show that individual differences in IRR significantly predicted the modulation of emotional responses by expressive suppression in adolescents, accounting for 48% of the variance of changes in occipital late positive potentials (LPP). Thus, it appears that IRR are implicated in an individual's ability to regulate emotions. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

Emotion regulation in adolescents: An ERP study.

AIMS: The use of emotion regulation strategies can reduce the intensity of negative emotional experiences. Event related potentials (ERPs), specifically the late positive potential (LPP), are known to be sensitive to this modulation in adults. This is the first study to explore the neural correlates of expressive suppression in adolescents. We sought to replicate previous findings from emotion regulation studies with adult populations, show that the LPP can be modulated by expressive suppression in healthy adolescents, and examine the influence of age on LPP changes. METHOD: ERPs of 53 healthy adolescents (12-17 years old) performing an emotion regulation task (expressive suppression) were recorded. RESULTS: Expressive suppression altered the LPP in adolescents with both increases and decreases noted depending on time window and recording site. The LPP during expressive suppression was decreased with increasing age. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that 1) the LPP is an effective tool to study processes associated with emotion regulation in adolescents, and 2) expressive suppression, in terms of its neural indicators, seems to become more effective with age. The nature and utility of expressive suppression as a specific form of emotion regulation in adolescents are discussed.